


Jaskier Doesn't Have a Death Wish

by Pixx



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, POV switches between Jaskier and Geralt, Please Don't Hate Me, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, first chapter can be read as either gen or shippy, look i have to hurt the sunshine boy its the only way i can feel anything, no beta we die like men, ok i lied this is going to be shippy as FUCK
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:15:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22296925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixx/pseuds/Pixx
Summary: You can't wake up, this is not a dream. You are part of a machine, you are not a human beingJaskier likes to pretend he doesn't have a death wish.HARD CONTENT WARNING FOR SUICIDAL IDEATION. PLEASE DON'T READ THIS IF IT IS GOING TO HARM YOU
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 62
Kudos: 462





	1. You can't wake up this is not a dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published fic, so please be nice. And I'm sorry in advance. This work was hugely inspired by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes' fic [layered ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22232836)

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish. 

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish, but sometimes he feels as if it would be better if he just  _ wasn’t here _ . Of course, he wouldn’t dream of telling anyone that sometimes he dreams of black nothingness, of the void and it feeling  _ so right _ . He’s the bard. Silly, goofy, dancing around to put a smile on everyone’s face. It’s not his place to feel like there’s an empty hollowness in his chest that he’ll never get rid of. Geralt is the brooder, not Jaskier. It doesn’t matter that sometimes Jaskiers smiles are so forced that he feels as if his face is going to split in two, it doesn’t matter that sometimes while he’s dancing, his feet and legs feel like they’re made of lead; making him fight for everyone movement when all he really wants to do is just…  _ not. _

Not smile. 

Not dance. 

Not  _ be _ . 

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish. 

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish, but when he’s cursed by the djinn, and his throat feels like it’s being torn out, and he can taste his own blood in his mouth, thick and coppery, and it’s running down his chin, in between the panic and the frantic rush to save his life and his voice, in the back of his mind and in the hollow inside his chest, there’s a little bit of hope. A sour hope, something bitter and metallic, that tastes a little like his blood. A sick sort of relief.  _ It’ll all be over soon, it’s almost done, you’re almost there Jaskier, and then you’ll never have to do this again _ . The niggling little hope makes him feel sick. 

And when he wakes up, and all traces of the curse are gone, and he can talk, and  _ sing _ , Jaskier can’t help the sinking feeling he gets in his heart, the tight feeling of disappointment in his chest that momentarily steals his breath. And then Jaskier breathes in deeply, and shoves that dark and twisted part of himself down,  _ down _ . Crumples it into a tiny little ball and throws it into a dark little corner of his mind, where he doesn’t have to think about or dwell on it. It’ll worm it’s way out though. It always does.

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish. 

They’ve picked up a contract. Some backwater village in Velen, to find something that’s been taking people from their homes and killing them. As they’re talking to the ealdorman, Jaskier feels a small flash of ugly jealousy, and he hates himself for it, and hates himself even more for focusing on himself while the man is talking about how his friends and family were slaughtered.  _ Stupid _ Jaskier.  _ Selfish _ Jaskier.  _ Better off dead _ . 

The monster turns out to be a Doppler, luring people out of their homes by wearing the face of their loved ones, to lure them into the swamps where they wouldn’t be heard. To play with them. When Geralt and Jaskier came across the place where the Doppler had taken their victims, a field with strewn parts of human bodies, Jaskier retched but nothing came up, even though his stomach churned and he could feel the acidity of bile in his chest. Even Geralt looked mildly discomforted, his usual frown deepening. They search the area thoroughly, sifting through human remains and stains on the ground that suggest there were bodily fluids everywhere. There’s no sign, no hints that point towards where the killer is hiding, and it’s getting dark so it’s decided that they’ll make camp for the night - some way from the monster’s playground - the smell is sickening. As they walk away, Jaskier glances back at the scene behind them, and something small inside him wants to be with the scattered corpses.

Dinner that night is quiet, subdued. Jaskier fiddles with his food, rather than eating it, the pieces of meat in the stew too similar to the bits of bodies in the field for his taste. His stomach is clenching with hunger pangs, but every time he tries to bring a spoon to his mouth, the scene in the field flashes in his mind’s eye, an undercurrent of  _ I want, I want, I want _ , beating in time with his heart. In his disgust at himself, Jaskier pushes his bowl away and gives up on the food, preferring instead to retire early, to curl up in his bedroll, facing away from Geralt so the witcher can’t see the shame on Jaskiers face, or the tears that escape his tightly shut eyes. 

Jaskier didn’t think he slept, but he must have, for he was woken by a thunderous  _ crack _ of something hitting a tree. 

Or someone, well,  _ someones _ to be more precise, two Geralts had stumbled onto the camp, both fighting for their lives, a tangle of blades and teeth and raw fury. Jaskier scrambled out of his bedroll to get out of their way, just in time as they stopped where he had been lying just a few moments ago, panting and growling. 

Both Geralts were injured, but one was injured more superficially, shallow cuts criss crossing his skin, blood slowly oozing down his face, his arms and his chest. The other one looked much worse off, with blood running down his face and neck, and a large, deep wound through his stomach, that he was holding with one hand. 

The wounded Geralt smiled, blood on his teeth, and charged with a blade. 

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish. 

Jaskier doesn’t have a death wish, and if you ask him later, he’ll say he had no idea why he did it, because it was probably the single most stupid thing he’s ever done in his life. If he’s being honest, he has no idea  _ how _ he did it either. One moment he’s standing in the campsite, the next moment he’s in front of the smiling Geralt, arms out protecting  _ his _ witcher from the bloody one’s blade. And then the next thing he knew was the Doppler was dead on the ground and Geralt,  _ his Geralt _ is lowering Jaskier to the ground. 

And it doesn’t hurt at first. It doesn’t feel good, of course, being stabbed in the gut never does, but Jaskier is surprised that it doesn’t hurt at first. As Geralt takes him in his arms, Jaskier looks down and makes a small noise of surprise. And then it hits, and the pain takes his breath away, makes his chest tight with agony, but Jaskier can’t find it in himself to care about the pain, not when he can hear his heartbeat and it says  _ it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming _ .  _ You’re done. It’s all done. It’s all over _ . And Jaskier relaxes under the hand Geralt’s pressing on his abdomen to stem the bleeding, and he raises a hand to Geralt’s face, his face with his golden eyes and the scars, which is contorted in anger and frustration and pain. And Geralt is talking to him, but Jaskier can’t hear it and he looks up at Geralt and he says, 

“It’s okay.”

It’s okay, it’s okay, because it’s over, and Jaskier doesn’t have to fight anymore, and he lets his eyes slip shut and lets the sound of his heartbeat wash over him like an ocean current and drag him down into the depths of the void. And Jaskier smiles, because he got what he’d been craving for so long. 

Because Jaskier has a death wish. 


	2. You are part of a machine, you are not a human being

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath and a reveal - Geralt's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who left comments, kudos or even just read the first part of this little story. It means a lot to me, especially hearing from the people who said that this was cathartic for them, felt real, or said it made them cry. Also, I’ve updated the tags, so please read before continuing.

Geralt used to enjoy silence. 

Of course, as a witcher, it’s never truly silent. His hearing is so sensitive that he can hear people’s heartbeats, or hear the wind rustling leaves from miles away. Not to mention Jaskier. The man never stopped making sound, whether that be the plucking of his lute, his constant singing or the incessant, never-ending chatter about anything and everything. Even the night was no reprieve, with the sound of Jaskier’s breathing, the beating of his human heart, the mumbles and sounds he made as he slept. It drove Geralt mad, and at his crankiest he desperately wished for blessed quiet, to be rid of the ever-noisy pest at his side. 

Geralt doesn’t enjoy silence anymore. 

He’d always known there was something a little…  _ off _ , about Jaskier. A little  _ too _ energetic, a little  _ too _ peppy, times when his usual smile looked like the stretched grin of a man being tortured, but covered up to mask the pain. He’d shrugged it off as one of the bards many eccentricities, or something that Jaskier didn’t want to talk about. And he certainly wasn’t going to encourage him to talk  _ more _ , after all. 

Geralt wished he’d said something. 

Now Jaskier was the quietest he’d ever been, laying on a bed in the closest healers house that Geralt could fine. His already pale skin was a sickly white and he was deathly still, so still that if Geralt hadn’t heard his shallow breaths and his weak, rabbit-quick pulse, he’d have assumed the bard was dead. 

It had come so, _so_ _close_ , though. Too close. When Jaskier had stood in front of him, taken the blade meant for him, he’d been so _angry_. This human, this soft, squishy little bard, foolish enough to put himself between a Witcher and a monster. Jaskier had spread his arms out. Like he was _protecting_ Geralt. Which Geralt, of course, didn’t understand. Why would Jaskier put himself between Geralt and a blade meant for him? He saw the kind of injuries Geralt sustained in his line of work, he knew it would have to be fatal, or near-fatal. Geralt had seen the determination in Jaskier’s face when he’d done it. Jaskier hadn’t cared, he hadn’t been scared, not even when he’d been wounded. 

Jaskier had  _ smiled _ at him. He’d been fatally wounded, bleeding out despite Geralt’s best efforts, hand clamped over, pressing down on what Geralt  _ knew _ was an agonizingly painful wound. Jaskier had  _ smiled  _ at him, had touched his face and told him it was going to be okay and then closed his eyes, that smile still on his face. 

Geralt honestly couldn’t have remembered the next few hours if he had tried. They passed in a blur of frenzied panic, anger and pain. 

Whoever said Witchers didn’t have emotions was a lying fuck. 

The first memory Geralt had after the attack was when he was already inside the healers house and Jaskier had been stabilised. Not completely out of the woods, they still had to wait to see if infection would set in, but he was unlikely to die in the next couple of hours. Jaskier was still covered in blood and dirt, so Geralt and the healer were washing him when they found them.

Covered in some sort of cream that hid them, revealed when they washed his arms. Huge scars that travelled up his arms from wrist to elbow, too neat to be accidental, to precise to be from a fight. Geralt wasn’t an idiot anyway, he’d been around long enough to see what gave those kind of scars. He never thought he’d see them on his friend though. 

Never in his wildest dreams thought Jaskier had tried to kill himself. 

The thought of his Jaskier, his little bard, with his lute and his singing and his chatter and his smiles, trying to… thinking that… 

But… trying to reconcile the image of Jaskier in his head with the new information he had was distressingly easy. The recklessness made more sense, Geralt had yelled at him for it a couple times, asking if the bard had a death wish. Jaskier would always reply with a sullen dismissal, lower lip pouting, and a few hours of more quiet than usual. A lie. 

Painfully quiet hour followed painfully quiet hour, Jaskier continuing to stay deathly still, no changes to his breathing or heartbeat. Geralt took one of his friend’s hands, and slowly rubbed his thumb on the inside of his small wrist, feeling his pulse, taking comfort in the fact that his bard was still here, still with him. 

But Jaskier wasn’t really with him, was he? He was inside his own head, locked in a healing slumber, supposedly oblivious to the world around him, indifferent to the witcher sitting next to him, holding his hand, focusing on his pulse and the sound of his breathing. Unknowing as to what would await him if -  _ when _ \- he awoke.

It was too quiet. Geralt wanted his bard back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a third chapter, which I'm currently in the process of writing


	3. With your face all made up, living on a sceen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier develops an infection

The healer was worried for Jaskier. His temperature over the past day had been climbing, and had now crossed the line into fever. Infection had set into the wound, and she was concerned that fighting it would sap what little strength Jaskier had left and he’d just… give up. Geralt knew that the healer knew just as well as he did what the scars on Jaskier’s arms were, how he’d come to have them.

For almost two days Jaskier had been deathly quiet, but the fever had broken the silence in such a way that Geralt honestly couldn’t tell whether he preferred the quiet or not. Jaskiers heart  _ raced _ , fighting for each beat, his chest heaved with the effort of drawing air into his lungs. Jaskier whimpered and cried in his sleep, pitiful sounds that tore at Geralt's heart. There had to be some way to help him, calm him. What would Jaskier do? Clumsily, hesitantly, Geralt tried to soothe Jaskier, smoothing down sweat-soaked hair, dabbing at his face with a damp rag to cool him. It wasn’t enough, so Geralt began to do exactly what Jaskier would do to calm anyone.

He began to talk.

“Jaskier… Jaskier,” he began, voice rough with pain and disuse, “it’s okay, you’re safe.”

“You’re safe Jaskier, here with me, you’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, because you have to be, you’re not going to let this be what takes you out. You’re too dramatic to be killed in some healers house in a nothing village out in the middle of nowhere. This would make a terrible song. There’s no wine, no young women, no epic fights. Just an angry doppler and an  _ incredibly stupid _ bard,” Geralt sighed, and then looked down at Jaskier’s hand, pale and clammy, small inside Geralt’s own, smooth and unscarred compared to his, then looked at Jaskier’s face, flushed with fever, eyes open and looking at him.

Eyes open.

“Jaskier! Jaskier can you hear me?” Geralt asked, putting a hand on Jaskiers cheek and calling for the healer. Jaskiers eyes were glassy, unfocused. Geralt thought at first Jaskier had been looking at him, but no, Jaskier was looking straight through him like he couldn’t even see him, not even knowing that Geralt was there. 

Jaskiers face  _ crumpled _ , glassy unfocused eyes filling and then shedding tear after tear, turning into huge heaving sobs mixed with unintelligible cries of protest, shoving Geralt away from him as the healer rushed into the room, asking - no,  _ demanding _ \- what happened. 

“I don’t know, I don’t think he knows what’s happening,” Geralt said, backing up from Jaskiers bedside, which only made the bard cry more, screaming things that couldn’t be understood as the healer fussed over him, lashing out at the poor woman. Geralt attempted to shush and soothe him, smoothing down his hair, murmuring nonsense while he tried to keep Jaskiers hands away from the healer trying to work on him. A sharp metallic smell filled the air, and Geralt looked down at Jaskiers stomach to find blood oozing from his wound, the stitches torn in his distress. 

The healer walked away for a moment and came back with a concoction that she tipped down the unwilling Jaskier’s throat, making him swallow. Within a minute his thrashing ceased, but his face remained tight, and he kept  _ crying _ , his sobs subsiding into something quieter but no less heartbreaking, and his screaming turned into a mumbling kind of whisper over and over again, that Geralt wished he couldn’t hear, while the healer set to work repairing the damage Jaskier had done. 

“M’sorry, lemme go. Please lemme go. Lemme die, I wanna die, please let me die, I’m sorry, please let me go please let me die.”

Geralt took Jaskier’s hand again and with the other smoothed down his bard’s hair, shushing and whispering to Jaskier until the sedative fully kicked in and his eyes closed and his face, tear stained and red, slackened into his drugged sleep. Geralt ran his fingers through Jaskiers hair one more time, then stood up to find the healer. 

“What the fuck was that?” Geralt asked the healer, who was sitting at her kitchen table with two large cups of some kind of herbal tea. 

“Hallucinations,’ the healer replied curtly, passing a cup to Geralt and wrapping her fingers more securely around her own. “They can happen with fever, especially one as high as his. Hallucinations and delusions.” She looked at Geralt, and there were a few tears in her eyes as well. “We’ll have to keep him asleep until the fever breaks, so he doesn’t reopen those wounds again.” Geralt nodded at the healer and went back to his place at Jaskiers side. 

While Jaskier was sleeping peacefully, Geralt used the damp rag to wipe off his tear-stained face, then rinsed the rag and continued his work of trying to cool Jaskiers fever. Geralt's little bard looked very small and vulnerable in his sleep, with his flushed face and dark eyelashes resting against his plump cheeks. 

Geralt had spent more time than usual looking at Jaskiers face lately, committing those features to memory in case the worst came to pass. The thought of Jaskier being gone twisted Geralt’s heart in a unique and terrible way, but the fear that his bard would be gone and Geralt would forget about him, what he looked like, what he sounded like, sent an icy spear of fear through his chest. So he looked at Jaskiers face, ran his thumb along those cheeks, noticed every twitch of his eyelids. 

The sedative the healer gave Jaskier was beginning to wear off, but it was not quite time for his next dose, and Jaskier began to scrunch his face in discomfort, and his eyes opened again, not looking in Geralt’s direction at all, and still unfocused and glassy, like he couldn’t see where he was. Jaskier seemed a little calmer compared to last time though.

“Jaskier,” Geralt started, hesitant in case it set off an attack like last time, “Jaskier, can you hear me?” Jaskier made a small ‘hm’, and his eyes searched for whoever he thought was talking to him. Geralt decided to try talking to him again, “Jaskier, you’re okay, you’re safe here, we’re at a healer.” On hearing that, Jaskier curled in on himself a little, disgruntled. 

“Y-” Jaskiers voice was hoarse, quiet and tired.”You should have left me alone. Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” 

Geralt didn’t answer. He didn’t know whether Jaskier knew who he was talking to, or even if he knew he was talking to someone, or lost in one of his delusions or even a memory. Jaskier didn’t seem to care that he hadn’t received a reply though, and kept going with his one-sided conversation. 

“I had a plan, everything would have been okay.”

“It would have been better. You wouldn’t have had to worry about me.”

Jaskiers face then took on the angriest expression Geralt had ever seen on the man, as he hissed, “ _ well it wasn’t your decision to make, was it? _ ” The expression disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Jaskier looked haunted and tired, the kind of exhaustion that came from a long and difficult battle and he murmured, ‘it wasn’t your decision. You should have let me go.”

Jaskier’s eyes closed, and he fell asleep again, but a tear still escaped his eye. 

Geralt could do nothing but sit and wait for his little bard to come back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear the comfort in hurt/comfort is coming at some point. And again, sending all my love to those who have read, and especially to those who have left comments and kudos!


	4. Low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier floats

Jaskier was floating, a feather along the water, helpless to the current that moved him, impossibly light, uncaring to anything around him. A breeze swept along, ruffling his hair, soft on his cheeks.

_ Is this what it’s like? _

_ I should have died earlier _

_ This is so nice _

Jaskier felt a pull, a nagging feeling in his mind that he was forgetting something or someone. It tugged at his brain, gently but insistently. 

And then it pulled again,  _ hard _ , and Jaskier was pulled down into the water, away from the breeze, breathing in water that filled his lungs and sent pain shooting through his chest. Deeper, and deeper again until the sun above him was nothing but a pinprick of light in all-encompassing darkness. 

  
  


Jaskier was in Oxenfurt, fighting with healers and friends as he fought to continue what he’d started, screaming to be let go. His arms hurt, more than anything he’d ever felt before, but Jaskier didn’t care, fighting the healers as they tried to pour painkillers and other healing potions down his throat. He’d wanted to  _ die _ , damn it, why couldn’t they just let him? Couldn’t they see he was suffering? Couldn’t they see that  _ everyone _ was better off if he was dead? Why wouldn’t they just  _ let him go _ ? One of the healers managed to catch him and shoved the potion in his mouth, holding his face, forcing him to swallow. The potion robbed him of his strength and he collapsed back onto his bed, his screams going quiet and turning into pleading and begging, not wanting his work, his  _ pain _ to be for nothing. 

_ I’m sorry, let me go. Please let me go. Let me  _ die,  _ I want to  _ die, _ please let me die, I’m sorry please let me go please let me die _ . 

Jaskier woke in his room in Oxenfurt, arms bandaged and aching. Every throb was a reminder of his  _ failure _ . What was the point of keeping Jaskier around? He couldn’t even manage to  _ kill himself _ properly, he cocked it up like he fucked up everything else around him.

There was someone sitting at his bedside. At first glance it was a dark haired woman, but when he blinked there was a man there instead. Broad shouldered, white hair. Yellow eyes like a cat. 

“Jaskier?” The man called in a woman’s voice, “Jaskier can you hear me?” The image was so strange that Jaskier was taken aback, but he answered anyway, like he was being puppeted by someone else.

“Yeah. I can hear you,” Jaskier replied, his voice sounded weak and tired even to him. God he just wanted to  _ sleep _ . 

“Jaskier, what were you  _ thinking? _ ” the man cried, still in that strange woman’s voice, and it was the queerest thing, that woman’s voice coming out of the white-haired man’s mouth, almost as if this wasn’t actually his voice. 

“You should have left me alone,” Jaskier said sullenly, his mouth moving and forming words seemingly on its own, leaving a bitter taste behind, “Why couldn’t you leave me alone?”

The man’s face contorted into a kind of frustrated anger. “Leave you alone,” he asked, “Leave you  _ alone _ ? Jaskier, you almost bled out. You almost died.  _ What were you thinking? _ ”

“I had a plan. Everything would have been okay.”

“Does that mean you did it on  _ purpose _ ? You tried to kill yourself? What on  _ earth _ would have possessed you to do something so monumentally  _ stupid _ , Jaskier? How could you do that to yourself?”

“It would have been better. You wouldn’t have had to worry about me.” 

At that, the man stood over him and Jaskier shrank back at his yelling. 

“ _ Not have to worry about you?  _ After this, I can’t do anything  _ but _ worry about you. I can’t even leave you alone after you did this! I had to  _ save your life _ Jaskier, the least you could do is be grateful!” 

“ _ Well it wasn’t your decision to make, was it? _ ” Jaskier hissed in righteous anger. It was  _ his _ life, and it was  _ his _ decision to end it. Who the hell was this person to intervene? He glared at the man, and his form shimmered, becoming again the dark haired woman from the start, who, looking affronted and offended, turned on her heel and walked out, slamming the door behind her. 

_ I remember this _ , Jaskier thought.  _ This was in Oxenfurt. The first time I tried to… _

_ But… Geralt wasn’t there. We hadn’t met back then, had we? _

Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut, confused and lost. What was happening to him? Why was he reliving some of his worst memories, why had he seen Geralt instead of the friend who had turned her back on him? Jaskier’s thoughts felt like he was wading through molasses, thick and heavy as tar, a struggle to think clearly. Jaskier shook himself a little, and opened his eyes.

Geralt was still there. Jaskier blinked, trying to clear the image, but it stubbornly remained no matter how many times he tried. The room was different though. He wasn’t back in Oxenfurt anymore, but he had no idea  _ where _ he was. Geralt moved, face coming down level to his, mouth moving into words that Jaskier couldn’t understand, until everything around him snapped into stark clarity.

“-er, can you hear me? Jaskier?”

_ Geralt _

“Geralt?”

Geralt’s frown lifted into the closest thing to relief he’d ever seen on the witcher’s face, and he called over his shoulder to someone. 

“Geralt what happened? Where are we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who have read, and especially those who have left comments and kudos.


	5. I think there's a flaw in my code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier wakes up

“Geralt what happened? Where are we?”

As soon as the words had left Jaskier’s mouth, Geralt very suddenly left his view and was replaced with a bustling woman with a stern face, checking his pulse and eyes, making Jaskier very confused. 

“Can you hear me dear?” she asked, “how are you feeling?”

“Yes, and I’m fine, I think,” Jaskier replied, “did something happen? Where’s Geralt?” The woman’s face softened a tad, mouth turning up at the corners. 

“You had a nasty accident, from what your witcher here told me. You’re lucky he made it here in time. If he’d been any slower you’d have been dead and buried already.”

“Where is he? Where’s Geralt?” Jaskier asked again, voice betraying the slightest edge of panic. On his other side, a hand touched his own, and a familiar gruff voice reassured him. 

“I’m right here Jaskier, let the healer do her work.” Jaskier turned his head to see… something that looked like Geralt, but also not, because he had  _ never _ seen Geralt with a face like that. No scary frown, no set jaw. He looked almost… soft. And concerned. Like he was  _ worried _ for Jaskier. And he was holding Jaskiers hand. 

_ He was holding Jaskiers hand _ . 

“Geralt,” Jaskier started, uncertain of how to approach this new and weird Geralt. “Geralt, what happened?”

The line between this new, soft witcher’s brow deepened. 

“You don’t remember Jaskier?”

“No,” Jaskier replied, starting to get a little frustrated. He just wanted to know what  _ happened _ , damn it, and  _ why the hell Geralt was acting so weird _ ! “The last thing I recall is eating dinner at that  _ disgusting _ tavern that had bugs. So you have to tell me Geralt, because I don’t know.  _ What the hell happened? _ ” 

Geralt sighed and the hand that was holding Jaskiers clenched a little. Not enough to hurt, it was gentle but it weirded Jaskier out a little. Not in an uncomfortable way, his hand was strong and warm, but it was comforting in a way that Jaskier never expected to come from the witcher. Geralt’s thumb ghosted over the back of Jaskier’s hand as he spoke.

“It was a Doppler. We were fighting, you got in between us, took a blade to the gut. It’s dead now but,” Geralt’s face looked almost haunted, “you almost died. You came so close, I thought I was going to have to bury you.” 

Jaskier was confused. “Why on earth would I do that?” 

Geralt laughed, a short humourless thing. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.” The thumb that was rubbing the back of Jaskier’s hand brushed over the scars on his wrist. 

_ The scars on his wrist _ . As far as he knew, Geralt didn’t know he had them. Jaskier had certainly  _ never _ told Geralt about them, preferring to put the whole shameful affair behind him, to forget it existed until the sickness in him reared its ugly head. Jaskier spluttered. 

“How - what - if you’re  _ implying _ that I - that’s -” Jaskier’s protests died down as this weird Geralt was replaced with one that Jaskier knew too well. Angry Geralt, deep frown between his brows, mouth set into a hard line, spoke to Jaskier in a tone he hadn’t heard turned on him in a good long while. 

“I’m not  _ implying _ anything, Jaskier. I’m asking you, and you  _ will _ tell me the truth. I’ve seen your arms, I know what you tried to do, and I’m  _ asking _ you if this was an attempt to do it again. I’m not going to ask again nicely, so you’d better give me the truth  _ now _ , bard.” 

“No!” Jaskier yelped, “No! I - I don’t know!” His eyes were suspiciously wet, and Geralt’s angry face melted away and the weird worried Geralt was back. Geralt tried to soothe Jaskier by running his thumb along the back of his hand again, but Jaskier snatched the hand away and cradled it close to his chest. Looking down, Jaskier could see the scars in all their ugly glory, washed clean of the makeup he usually used to hide them. He crossed his arms across his chest so he didn’t have to see them anymore, and shrank in on himself, looking as vulnerable and small as he did when he was first brought in. 

He heard Geralt huff a little, then sigh deeply. 

“Jaskier,” he started, then stopped, seeming unsure of how to continue. “Jaskier, I’m - I’m sorry,” he continued, quietly. Geralt sounded tired, Jaskier realized. More tired than he’d ever sounded before. And he’d certainly never  _ apologized  _ before. 

_ He must have been really scared. _

_ For you? Don’t be pathetic. _

_ Once he realizes how fucked up you are, he’ll leave you. For good this time. _

“No,” Jaskier said with false cheer, only the slightest waver in his voice, “it’s fine - it’s all good! Nothing to worry about Geralt, it’s long in the past. I’ve moved past it. Nothing to worry about. You don’t have to worry about me” Jaskier tried to smile at Geralt, but it came out wrong, all weak and wobbly, looking less reassuring and more like he was in pain. Jaskier was expecting a flippant response from Geralt, something along the lines of  _ I wasn’t worrying about you,  _ or  _ bold of you to assume I care _ , but no such response came. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt said instead, “having trouble like that, it’s alright. I don’t think any less of you for struggling. You need to talk to me though. I need to know what’s going on in that jumbled head of yours.” 

_ He’s going to leave you _

_ He doesn’t care about you _

_ You’re too screwed up, even for him.  _

_ I don’t think any less of you for struggling _

Jaskier burst into tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and he was holding jaskiers hand  
> *vine voice* _Oh my god he was holding jaskiers hand_  
>  jokes aside, this chapter kicked my fucking ass. it's easier to write the hurt stuff, I'm no good at the whole comforting thing, in real life and fiction. And to the reviewer who wanted their pie, I hope this is beginning to scratch that itch for you.   
> peace out, and as always, all my love to all the readers, and extra love to those who leave comments and kudos


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